dhf@linus.mitre.org (David H. Friedman) (11/02/90)
. Some weeks ago I posted an item that I had bought the Norton Utilities
version 5.0, and when I ran the Calibrate function on my hard disc, it told
me that the controller was one of the types (sector-translating, RLL, etc.)
for which it could not do a low-level format. The disk is an ST251-1 (42 Mb)
set up as a single DOS 3.3 partition, and as for the controller, all I have
on it is that it's an MFM with apparently-fixed 1:1 interlace. I ran the
PC Magazine utility DRIVSPEC and, sure enough, it said that the sector size
was 1024 bytes (not 512), with 2 sectors per cluster, so it seems I have a
sector-translating controller after all.
So far everything works fine and I have no complaints about the system,
but it would be nice to know:
1) Which software package (SpinRite, etc.), if not Norton 5.0, do I want
for doing a low-level format on this beast?
2) Does the controller board likely have any jumpers that I can look for
which enable/disable the sector translation, interlace selection, etc.?
3) When I run Windows 3.0, there's a lot of disk churning going on every
time I open a window for a new application, etc. Is it likely that
changing the interlace could significantly speed things up, and would
this require replacing the controller?
4) I might want to add a really big (80-100 Mb) disk some day. Should I
(a) replace the controller
(b) go to DOS 4.01
(c) all of the above?
I'd be interested to hear (?) the experiences of others with the same
combination. Unfortunately my dealer (ISCA in Burlington, MA) just went out
of business (too bad - they seemed to be a reputable outfit) so I can't
get any info from the techs who assembled the system for me.
dhf@linus.mitre.org
(David H. Friedman, The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730)